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| The story of chocolate starts with the cocoa tree.
The cocoa tree grows a long way from here, in areas around the equator, such as the Ivory
coast, Ghana, Equador, Brasil, Malaysia, Indonisia... |
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A cocoa tree will produce 20 to 30 oval
fruits, called pods, that grow to about 20 cm and turn from green to a yellow and red
color.Each pod contains 25 to 40 seeds and these are the cocoa beans |
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| When the pods become yellow or orange in colour, they
are ready to harvest. This happens all year round, with the main harvest period being from
October to March |
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Once harvested, the pods are opened and the valuable
cocoa beans are taken out |
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| Now it is time to ferment the beans. They are
fermented in troughs and conserved with banana leaves, the beans change from a
creamy-white colour to brown, and this is when they start to develop their cocoa flavour. |
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After fermentation, which takesabout one week, the
cocoa beans are spread out and dried in the sun |
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